“Scrum ignores quality”

Are you serious? — Episode 64

Broken window by skeeze at Pixabay

Carla is a developer in a Scrum Team that is having a tough time. Both our sons are in the same football team and when we were watching their game, she started discussing this issue with me. We aren’t colleagues, but Carla knows my passion for Scrum. So she took the opportunity. She likes many things about Scrum, but she feels that Scrum ignores quality. This sparked an interesting conversation.

I responded: “What is it that you miss that brings you to this observation?”

Carla: “Well we don’t have any guidelines that help us determine when our code has sufficient quality. We are simply in the dark about it”.

Me: “So you don’t know when an item is “Done”?

Carla: “Oh yes we do know when an item is “Done”. It’s when our code is QA-tested and ready to be deployed to pre-production. But this is not sufficient. It frustrates me that we don’t do peer-reviews or — as an alternative — do pair programming.”

Me: “Do you work with a Definition of “Done”?

Carla: “What do you mean with a Definition of “Done”?

Me: “A Definition of “Done” — or DoD — is a shared understanding of when work is complete. I believe you have a DoD though. Your team sees QA-testing and code being ready to be deployed…